The Bible Tells Me So

I was 30 years old when I realized that I didn't have to be good in my own strength to be saved.

I'd grown up in Adventist schools, been guided by Adventist parents who never actually taught me that I was saved by doing the right things; and yet, somehow I'd gotten the idea. I was a works-oriented person anyway—a capable, take-charge, do-it-myself-and-do-right sort of person.

Concern about my grandfather stayed hidden in a crack of my memory. He died when I was 16, a kind, compassion ate Christian who never understood the Sabbath. Thinking back now, I know the shouting discussions he had with Adventist kin wouldn't have convinced anyone.

Reading Steps to Christ years later, I came to realize with a sense of wonder that God would judge Papa (and me) by our relationship with Him. It took a real burden off my mind. It was exhilarating. I began to study deeper. The Holy Spirit became a person to me during that time, and I longed to go "home."

My family lives on a small acreage of Tennessee hills north of Nashville. Houses are separated by woods-covered ridges. My husband is gone from six in the morning to six at night. For a while I had three children less than 6 years old home with me all day. I was lonely.

Then our oldest started school. Now I stayed home with a baby and a 3-year-old. Driving to the elementary school twice a day added variety to my life—and fleeting, longing glimpses of adults—but I remained lonely.

Loneliness is a strange thing. It can either aid or destroy you. Daytime TV held no interest, but I knew that my life had to include more than babies. (Stop here. I enjoyed my kids. We fed and watched wild birds. We ate outside. We took walks. We rocked and sang and read stories. But I began to get desperate for more than 6-year-old conversation.)

I'd always made it a practice to study the Sabbath school lesson and the Bible along with the Spirit of Prophecy daily, but now the study became food, life to me. And I began to talk with God as if He were sitting beside me on the couch. I asked Him to bring some good out of my emptiness, to open my mind to His care. It was during this time that Steps to Christ changed my whole understanding of God.

I read, "He [Christ] offers to take our sins and give us His righteousness. If you give yourself to Him, and accept Him as your Saviour, then, sinful as your life may have been, for His sake you are accounted righteous. Christ's character stands in place of your character, and you are accepted before God as if you had not sinned. More than this, Christ changes the heart." —Page 2.

This concept followed me around as I changed diapers and washed dishes, watched the girls at the creek and rocked the baby at midnight. Instead of God being a stern and distant ruler, He be came my friend.

I couldn't wait to share this with my mother. The next time I went home, we sat on her bed and talked. I can still see the sun slanting through the sheer curtains that Sabbath afternoon. "You know, I've wondered about that," she finally said.

She was my student; I her teacher! "I've thought that God could not be as stern as we make Him out to be. So we're saved by believing on Jesus."

Understanding shone through her eyes. "That's right. Isn't that what Paul and Silas told the jailor: 'Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shall be saved'?"

She told my aunt, who said to me a few days later, "Your mother and I have said to each other before that we wondered whether we were really saved by keeping the Ten Commandments."

Joy—a quiet, contented feeling—washed into those questioning cracks in my mind. Who could help loving a God like that, a God who became man to live and die to save us?

I returned to Nashville. As always, there was a time of emptiness, of adjustment. I liked being home, surrounded by family, but for a while my house was too big, the children too noisy (with no caring grandparents and aunts to help me), and the days too long.

Again I returned to the Bible. It was a pleasure to know Jesus better through His Book. I left the New Testament and went into the Old. Isaiah and Job became favorites. Months passed, and I prayed that I'd be able to share my new-found friendship with Jesus with my family.

You must understand, my parents lived their religion. We had family worship, we studied the Sabbath school lesson, but we'd never talked much about our personal involvement in it all. God was up in heaven, and I didn't know Him personally. Why is it that the vital issues of life are often the ones we hesitate to speak of aloud? Now it seemed that God was opening my voice, enabling me to tell of our friendship, and my mother responded in kind.

Once she mentioned overhearing her pastor tell his sister goodbye. The sister replied, "Goodbye, Jesus is coming soon."

With a look of wonderment, my mother said, "They talk to each other like that all the time."

Why is it, I pondered, that we speak so little of Jesus?

What is real?

That was one of the returning questions that nibbled at the edge of my mind.

Spring tulips, new puppies, and my children singing around the piano are real.

Flowers from my husband, my family around the Christmas tree, home-fresh bread in my hands—they're real.

Holding my asthma-choked little boy upright all night so he can breathe is real.

So is our kitten crushed by a speeding car, and my friend with now-in-remission Hodgkin's disease. She has three-month checkups and lives with the knowledge that it became active after a five-year remission.

What is real? I asked myself. Is the bad more real than the good? Is there nothing with more substance than the wind? What is real in life if it can so easily be snatched away?

Turning to the Bible, I was assured. "'Ho, every one who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat!'" (Isa. 55:1, R.S.V.). "'Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved"" (Acts 16:31, R.S. V.). " 'I am the resurrection and the life; he who believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live"" (John 11:25, R.S.V.). "Surely I come quickly" (Rev. 22:20).

I want to go home.

Yet—and this is the vital point—if I didn't know God, heaven would not be home to me.

So much to learn, so far to go. Pain, even the sorrows of strangers, has always hurt me. I just don't deal well emotionally with the everyday news. "Pregnant woman killed by drunk driver on her twenty-fourth birthday." That was on the news this week.

Why, God?

Before I knew Jesus as my friend, I raged, "Why?" and shut my mind to the pain and to the God who allows it.

I know Him better now. I've met Him over the years in the Bible. It has occurred to me that our Brother and our Father not only have an infinite capacity for joy, They also have an infinite capacity for pain. And it causes me to love Them so much more.

It's freedom, knowing that Jesus has saved me—loving Him because He saves unconditionally and not because of any thing I'm able to do.

And slowly—oh, so slowly—comes the knowledge that my sins hurt Him, too. Instead of avoiding sin because I'm trying to be saved, now I do so to avoid anything that would separate me from Him. I don't want to hurt Him. I want to see Him, too. Now, and by God's grace from now on, the whole purpose of my life is to live with Jesus. In a way, heaven can begin right here.

I care deeply for Him.

He loves me.

Prayers from the parsonage

by Cherry B. Habenicht

Pictures flicker on television screens and lights twinkle on Christmas trees. Through frosted windows I see a woman moving about to prepare supper. Her husband bends to poke at glowing logs in the fireplace.

Fingers aching with cold, I press the doorbell. Us ring shatters the peaceful scene. The wife stops her work; the man waits as if he has imagined the noise. Again I ring the bell, and the man slowly rises.

"Who is it?"

I'm momentarily blinded by the porch light. The door opens a crack, and a nose appears.

"Good evening. I'm from the Hinsdale Seventh-day Adventist church. We're visiting each home in the area to explain our worldwide humanitarian
work ..."

Lord, the freezing weather makes a barrier, but there are other walls as well. POW I wish I knew this couple well enough to greet them by first name and visit as a friend! I wish I had time to describe the scope of my church's concern for the welfare of this community! I wish I were giving rather than asking.

"And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn to you again" (Luke 10:5, 6).

Please let me be an ambassador of peace tonight. I can give a happy smile, a courteous greeting, a specific presentation.

Make me observant so I can speak with interest to each individual. May the Holy Spirit direct our conversation and prompt questions about spiritual matters.

The church is well-organized with bands and goals, charts and statistics, but our motivation is to contact every person in the territory. I pray that Your
Spirit will open hearts sealed by prejudice or skepticism, that He will unstop ears deaf to pleas for charity, that He will silence lips about to offer flimsy
excuses.

Let me give love, show joy, offer hope— through You. When I turn to walk down these steps, I do not want to leave this home in darkness.